Mobile communication devices, such as cellular telephones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), are becoming ubiquitous throughout much of the world. Indeed, many people consider such devices an essential part of modem living. Cellular technology provides a large proportion of wireless communications through technologies such as code division multiple access (CDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), and other standard cellular protocols. Push-to-talk (PTT) technology, which is a form of dispatch voice communications, is known and commonly used for voice communications. PTT technology, for example, is used as a part of the Integrated Dispatch enhanced Network (iDEN) communications systems sold and provided by Motorola, Inc. of Schaumburg, Ill. Dispatch voice communications together with cellular communications has been developed. This combination of technologies is known as Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC) communications systems.
Spurring the adoption of these mobile communication devices by consumers is a wide range of functionality now being designed into the devices. For example, mobile communication devices now are available which include computer applications, Internet access, text messaging, and integrated digital cameras.
In a like manner, developers have been creating applications for use with non-mobile systems. Examples include automated dial in services such as movie presentation times, sporting event scores, stock market reports, and automobile traffic reports. An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated telephone information system that speaks to the caller with a combination of fixed voice menus and data extracted from databases in real time. The caller responds by pressing digits on the telephone or speaking words or short phrases. Typically, a user with a personal digital assistant, cell phone, wired phone, or computer based phone would call a phone number to access a menu based system which contains a tree menu structure with multiple nodes. The user would progress through the menu to the desired information by manually entering a DTMF tone or a spoken word or words at each level to move to the next level of the menu.
However, every time the user wishes to access the menu based system, the user would be required to manually enter the DTMF tones or spoken words to progress to the next level of the tree, and eventually to the desired information. This process is time consuming and potentially frustrating to the user since the tree based menu may comprise many levels and require the user to enter several responses before the desired information is obtained as well as the tree structure changing, requiring users to listen to the new menu structure. Traditional IVR systems allow users to dial in (1-800-555-TELL) and select Sports, Baseball, American or National League, then select the team name. These systems have increased their intelligence and usability by adding a favorite's option which requires setting up a user account, password, and answering setup questions. Once in the system you need to navigate to favorites wait for prompt and then navigate through your favorites using voice. Enabling new services require new dial in numbers and extensible marketing expense to promote users to recall the number to dial to retrieve access the new service. Additionally, a method of automatically transferring a phone number or location identifier of the desired menu location or node, desired content, or the desired information to the personal digital assistant or cell phone does not exist.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a method of accessing the desired information from a menu based system directly from the handset without manually entering DTMF tones or spoken words. It is desirable to provide the ability to add new and modify existing entry points into a menu based system without user input. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.